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There are two sets of dates and the names of two young men on Jenny Spratt’s Facebook page.

Will Johnston, born 8/1/97, died 7/14/16.

Riley Shannon, born 1/24/96, died 3/11/17.

The Ingersoll woman was friends with both young Ingersoll men. Johnston drowned in Port Stanley last summer. Shannon died on the weekend trying to stop three teenagers from taking a front-end loader at a party in Dorchester, police say.

In a voice close to shattering, Spratt answers the first question on the phone with, “I’ve been better.”

Her voice grows a bit stronger as she describes the two men, boys really, she lost.

“Will was always so studious. His first house party was my grad party.”

“Riley was always being goofy and the class clown.”

That two young men, different in personalities, both lost their lives because of risky behaviour, either their own or others’, doesn’t surprise Western University psychologist Alan Leschied.

“It’s as old as history,” he says with a sad sigh.

But the story has to be told again, and again, in an effort to help young people, especially young males, recognize they’re not invulnerable and that their decisions can damage dozens of lives beyond their own.

“We need to keep a focus on these things, as a cautionary tale,” Leschied said.

While society has come far raising awareness among the young of the dangers of drinking and driving, some observers say that’s not the case when it comes to other risky behaviour by young adults.

William Johnston

A hard-working and clever student, Johnston had moved from Ingersoll to London to study mechanical engineering at Fanshawe College. He plunged into rough Lake Erie waters on a summer afternoon July 14, 2016. Lifeguards rescued his girlfriend, but couldn’t save him.

The outgoing Shannon was at a party in Dorchester on Saturday night when three males took off on a skid steer, a tracked loader.

Friends say Shannon ran out to try to stop them.

“He had the biggest heart. He would help anyone. He didn’t need to know you to help,” Spratt says.

The skid steer ran over Shannon, who died shortly after in hospital, police said. Three teenagers from Thames Centre, Ryan Esler, 18, Adam Sinden, 18 and Trent Weller, 19 are charged with criminal negligence causing death.

Spratt was in the same grade as Johnson in St. Mary’s Catholic high school in Woodstock. Shannon was a grade ahead.

Shannon finished high school in Ingersoll but he and Spratt remained friends and ended up sitting beside each other at a dual-credit Fanshawe College-high school criminology class in London in Grade 12.

“We were partners in crime,” Spratt remembers. “I can still hear his stupid laugh and telling people his stupid jokes, trying to get a smile out of people.”

As the year ended, Spratt arranged to have Shannon leave class for a moment to set up her prom-posal, with a crime-themed poster, of course, that included Monopoly get-out-of-jail-free cards.

“It was the kind of thing for girls in my school that year to ask the guys out,” she says.

Shannon said yes and the photograph of the smiling teenagers at the prom graces the top of Spratt’s Facebook page this week. Further down her page is a photograph of Spratt with Johnson on a beach. The two photos capture those wonderful moments that feel like youth will last forever.

“There is a sense among young people that ‘nothing can happen to me,’” Leschied said.

That’s especially true for males, whose hormones rage and whose brains — and their emotional and impulse control — don’t fully develop until they are 24 or 25.

In groups of young males, “there are rewards . . . social standing . . . that come from pushing the envelope further than anyone else,” Leschied said.

Making matters more dangerous are drugs and alcohol. Binge drinking, five or more drinks at a time, is more typical of younger drinkers from age 17 to 21 than older people, says Dr. Robert Mann, a scientist with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s research wing.